Plenty of attorneys besides Steven Donziger were drawn into the morass of Chevron's Ecuadorean environmental battle over the years. Tuesday's ruling in Chevron's fraud case against the plaintiffs can be read as a tale of lawyers run amok and sometimes led astray.

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What's being said

Those of us who have closely followed this case can‘t say we‘re surprised by the verdict, but many of us are certainly delighted by it. And we hope it will encourage other defendant companies that have been victimized by fraudulent lawsuits to fight back with RICO suits of their own. Since state bar associations, state attorneys general and a Department of Justice currently obsessed with restoring felons‘ voting rights appear to have little interest in punishing those who perpetrate brazen fraud on our civil courts, private sector companies such as Chevron, CSX, Feld Entertainment and Garlock are bravely forging a new path, using the RICO statute, to pursue just punishment themselves.

-Darren McKinney, American Tort Reform Association, Washington, D.C.

not available

Mar 05, 2014

Those of us who have closely followed this case can‘t say we‘re surprised by the verdict, but many of us are certainly delighted by it. And we hope it will encourage other defendant companies that have been victimized by fraudulent lawsuits to fight back with RICO suits of their own. Since state bar associations, state attorneys general and a Department of Justice currently obsessed with restoring felons‘ voting rights appear to have little interest in punishing those who perpetrate brazen fraud on our civil courts, private sector companies such as Chevron, CSX, Feld Entertainment and Garlock are bravely forging a new path, using the RICO statute, to pursue just punishment themselves.